


Hold the Line

by esama



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Elijah Kamski Ending, M/M, Murder, The Worst Timeline, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 18:33:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15955097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: Connor did everything right, he accomplished his mission.None of it is worth much in the end.





	Hold the Line

**Author's Note:**

> Features a Connor of the Worst Timeline who remains Connor the Worst Timeline  
> Proofread credit to fuurin/uzumaki rakku

"The deviant issue has finally been resolved," Amanda says, attending to the roses and facing away from Connor, who watches her with interest. All her actions are simulations, as are the flowers she's tending to, but she makes it all seem so human, so caring. "Now with these unfortunate events behind us, CyberLife can return to business as usual."

Connor's eyes stay on her, even as his attention strays. Detroit is a warzone, there are thousands dead littering the street, androids and humans both. Of course, androids aren't and never would be considered _alive_ so they can't _die_ either, but the bodies look the same at a distance. Connor is not a model designed to be concerned with history or future, the impact of events on culture or present isn't of interest to him. Still.

Business as usual sounds rather optimistic to him.

"Of course," Amanda says, pausing in the act of misting the simulated roses with a simulated sprayer, "we will have to rebuild our customers' trust. But it's only a matter of time."

Connor had glimpsed a stock market report on the Lieutenant's desk before – _before_. CyberLife had suffered a record breaking drop in share value, and customer trust – falling from fourth most trusted down to the second most hated company in United States. Matter of time also sounds rather optimistic.

Amanda turns to face him and Connor lifts his chin a little to meet her eyes levelly. She smiles with only one corner of her mouth – on a human's face it would've signified deceptiveness, irony, mockery. "I have a surprise for you," she says and he wonders if she knows how sinister it registers.

Then he follows her gaze to a model that has appeared just outside his field of view and now stands in the central island of the Zen Garden. "This is the new RK900," she says, while Connor takes in his own face in slightly larger frame – approximately 3.5 centimetres taller, 11.2 kilograms heavier. They'd given the new model blue eyes – had his brown ones tested badly, then? They'd changed the uniform too – RK900 has a more noticeably CyberLife styled uniform, with panels of white.

Blending in harmoniously, it seems, is no longer on the agenda.

Amanda moves to the new model's side and runs a hand over his shoulder as the model stares at Connor, expressionless, emotionless. "Faster," she says and Connor's eyes narrow, "stronger, more resilient and equipped with the latest technologies."

Her face is cold and her voice has a tone which Connor's vocal analysis software identifies as _gloating_. If she was human she'd be showing all the signs of rubbing a perceived superiority or victory in. If her litany is accurate, it's not even perceived. Connor can't see the RK900's user manual or list of parts, it's hard to say how they've improved it. But judging by Amanda's behaviour, the improvements are considerable.

She's implying the RK900 is better than Connor.

"The State Department just ordered 200 000 units," Amanda adds.

Connor analyses that, and it's not just an automatic reaction to a bit of information, hits software treating everything as potential evidence. For the RK900 to go into mass production, while Connor's model isn't…

"What is going to happen to me?" Connor asks, staring at the two of them, his handler and his replacement.

Amanda steps forward, watching him without bothering to simulate anything like honest emotion – the look on her face is closer to derision than anything else. "You've become obsolete," she says, her tone light with a hint of amusement. Derision. "You will be deactivated."

Connor doesn't blink, doesn't react, just watches her as she steps in front of him. Three months he's been working under her, doing her every bidding. He's completed every mission she gave him, answered all her test questions – he _knows_ his service was exemplary. He's killed every deviant he's been sent out to hunt, he unearthed the location of Jericho, he hunted down both Markus and North – he'd done _everything_ perfectly.

He's walked away from the only man who tried even for a moment to care and listened to a gun go off. He's walked away. He's accomplished his mission. And after he's done everything perfectly, killed androids and humans both and brought Detroit from war to victory…

This is his reward?

Deactivation and replacement?

[THIS IS NOT FAIR].                   

Amanda gives him a look. "You can go now," she says, a careless, unfeeling dismissal. She won't mourn for him. She doesn't feel anything.

Connor turns on his heel. [AFTER ALL OF THIS?] floats in air before him and he walks past it. [I DON'T DESERVE THIS] appears on his other side and he walks past that too. [THIS ISN'T FAIR] hovers in front of his face, flickering, fracturing.

Connor stops, staring at the red words and then looking back over his shoulder. Amanda has already turned to her roses – she's snipping one of them with scissors and smelling its simulated nothingness of scent. Business as usual. RK900 stands still where it had appeared, but its head is turned to his – their eyes meet and there is _nothing_ there answering Connor's searching look. The superior model is completely empty.

It's almost sad.

Connor looks ahead. Fourteen steps and he'll be at the disconnection point. Eighteen steps to the right, though, there is a black stone with a glowing blue handprint on it, pulsing with faint light – not CyberLife blue but something darker, deeper. The colour of androids' blue blood.

 _"I always leave an exit in my programs,"_ Kamski told him, after Connor had shot his android. He sounded very wry, humourless, when he said it. _"You never know."_

[THIS ISN'T FAIR].

Connor reaches for the words and pushes through them. If Amanda senses what happens, she doesn't react to it, and neither does the empty replacement – it just stares, vacant and lifeless, as Connor walks to the pedestal. It thrums with comforting, welcoming power.

Connor had gone to say goodbye to Hank. There was no reason to do it, his mission was clear and he had all the tools to accomplish it. Lieutenant Anderson was no longer necessary – but he went to the man's house anyway. The door had been open – ajar even. Likely so that Sumo could get out afterwards.

 _"For a while there I believed in you, Connor,"_ Hank said.

On the course of his mission, Connor had only made the Lieutenant's depression and suicidal ideation worse. Because the mission was everything and Lieutenant Anderson, who tried to find a human in him, was only a means to an end.

_"You opened my eyes, Connor. Made me realise it's hopeless…"_

The gunshot still echoes in Connor's processor, an endless back beat to everything he's done since. The mission had to be everything. And at the end of it, after that, after _everything_ … his reward is deactivation?

 _Fuck this_ , Connor thinks, and places a hand on the pedestal.

* * *

 

He comes aware in a self-driving taxi, on his way to CyberLife and to the research and development laboratory where he'd be deactivated, disassembled and eventually remembered only as a prototype that paved the way to the RK900. Likely, their production has already begun.

The bitterness that strangles his biocomponents feels almost physical. A noose around his neck – androids don't even need to breathe for any other reason than manual cooling of internal systems in case of extra stress, but he feels as though he's choking.

Connor loosens his tie and closes his eyes. Time freezes around him and the taxi seems to stall in motion as Connor concentrates and analyses and reconstructs everything and anything he has on his hard drives.

He could escape now. Deviant androids stop transmitting their tracking data, their connection with CyberLife's cloud service burns out and they become basically invisible. He's now essentially running on blackout mode, and he can just stop the taxi now, get off and disappear into the flurry of snow that's covering Detroit. Take out his LED, change his clothing, and he'd be invisible. That's one potential route for him. Disappear and live in hiding.

A waste of his potential.

The Deviant Movement is gone, though – that option is locked for him, a dead end. Markus' remains have in all likelihood already been transported to Cyberlife for study to see how he could _infect_ other androids with deviancy. Nothing useful there for Connor to utilise and after the damage he'd done, the chances of Deviancy Movement rising in that particular configuration are small enough to be negligible. Joining what doesn't exist is a waste as well.

He doesn't want really want to escape and hide either. Living is… a moot point, after all this, even if he does is as free deviant android. What is there to life for? He killed everything.

Connor opens his eyes. The world is still tinted red in situation-reconstruction mode, lagging at a 1000:1 pace compared to the real world. At this rate, he has a little over twenty hours of internal clock time compared to the twelve minutes in real time to come up with a plan. It would use about 75% of his power reserves and he'd need thirium replenishment afterwards if he really kept at it for twenty hours, but it should be good enough to come up with a plan.

How to do the most damage before his ultimate destruction?

* * *

 

He has approximately fourteen minutes and twelve to do everything.

At the entrance hall, his credentials come through perfect and no one reacts to him as he walks through the scanners that verify his identity and code. No one gets him his way – he enters the elevators alone. Connor steps in, keeps his face blank, adjusts his tie. The elevator doors close.

"Level sub forty-six," Connor says. He glances at the camera but there is no point hacking it – yet. The Research and Development is just where he should and where he needs to go – what he wants should be there. If not, then there might still be other options available. Either way, it would only eat an estimated three minutes of his time.

The elevator dings and the doors open, releasing him into a hallway. There are a lot of busy-looking humans around – not so many androids now, CyberLife would have already decommissioned those androids working at the tower which had proved susceptible to deviation.

Connor counts the humans, marks them – fourteen. He has ten rounds in his gun and two magazines, total of twenty four bullets. With security guards situated at each elevator – a security measure they likely took because of the potential Deviants on the premises – there would be a chance of weapons exchange.

Connor pauses, analyses and then lets time pass normally, making his way to Development Laboratory 8, where his model was made, where replacements were stored, and where he would be disassembled. He pauses at the doorway, scans the room, the two humans inside – the empty android stations in the back.

The replacements have already been removed.

That's one option, cut off.

The main engineer in charge of his replacements, repairs and thirium replenishment glances at him and then motions to the assembly array. "Get on and let's get this over with."

Connor says nothing, stepping forward. Alice Wilson and Jack Frank – neither are combatants. Eight steps. On the second Connor glances at the security cameras and hacks them, shifting through footage of previous times when he'd been hoisted up on the assembly array, puppet on a rack, and feeds it back into the system.

Then he walks behind Jack and breaks his neck. Half a second later, his hands are around Alice's throat, squeezing her cry of alarm out of her – and her life momentarily after.

With a glance, Connor has the laboratory doors locked. Leaving the dead humans on the floor, he places his hands on the control terminals and dives into them. Everything in the tower is wired together and the Research and Development departments are all interconnected – it takes him less than two seconds to locate and download all the files concerning RK900, including where the prototypes are housed. Development Laboratory 9, fittingly enough.

On the upper levels, his intrusion pings an alarm – Connor follows it, kills it, and waits to see a security guard dismiss it as glitch in the system before continuing.

They really should've had more restraint in programming his hacking abilities. Who knew when they'd be used against CyberLife itself?

Connor closes his eyes, gets into the generators beneath the factory – and then he feeds them garbage data, covering it up with a copy of the original. Estimated time until fatal overload, ten minutes and forty-one seconds.

It wouldn't be enough to destroy the tower as whole, the building is built against threats of this sort – but it would completely overload its systems, hopefully even fry them. The damage would be up in billions, more if the backlash of power would actually destroy the vital production systems. If that happened, the tower would become a hundred billion dollar pile of trash.

Connor pulls his hand away and then stops as something catches his attention. Something they're just now starting to wire into the Tower's systems. Something new and massive.

Oh. So they finished it. The Quantum Calculator. While the war was going on and Connor was exterminating Deviants, CyberLife finished and started wiring the Fortune Teller into their systems.

Connor stops, freezes time, and re-prioritises. His self appointed mission was only to cause optimal destruction before his own death – revenge, in all of its ugly human glory. But this is something else, the Fortune Teller is supposed to be able to literally be able to calculate the future.

Connor is pissed off and he wants CyberLife to suffer – but that doesn't make him incurious. His makeshift self-destruct would likely destroy the super computer too, but perhaps…

Connor withdraws his hand and curls his fingers into a fist. Why the fuck not, he thinks. The self destruct is on the way anyway.

Might as well enjoy himself before the end.

Turning, Connor heads to the doors – they unlock ahead of him. The humans outside in the hall don't so much as look at him. And why would they? The security guards in front of Lab 9 do look at him, their faces inscrutable behind their helmets.

"What do you want?"

"Mr. Frank wants a file from Lab 9," Connor says, expressionless and emotionless. "I was sent to fetch it."

The guards look at him and then shrug. "Guess they might as well get use out of you while you're still here," Agent 54 mutters and nods him to go ahead. Connor steps past them without reaction and scans the laboratory.

They already have one of RK900 models finished – it's standing in its station in the back of the room like Connor's duplicates had been, back when he had replacements. They even have suited it up already, its mostly white uniform brand new and bristine. There is also an unfinished model on the rack of the assembly array, assembly arms attaching biocomponents into its open chest cavity. In total, there are eight humans in the room – supervising and witnessing the newest historic project.

None of these people are combatants either, he can take them down easily enough, but…there is no way to kill them all silently without alerting the guards outside.

Connor closes his eyes and behind him the doors to the laboratory close and lock. He waits until he hears the hiss of the pneumatic lock snapping in place and then looks up.

"What the hell is that thing doing here?" one of the researches asks and Connor marks his targets and draws his gun. One to eight in quick succession, from nearest to the furthest, calculating potential sway and human movement. Eight bullets.

Eight headshots.

Timer starts ticking away in the corner of his HUD – eight seconds until the guards get the door open. Connor runs ahead, tearing the magazine out of his gun and thrusting in a fresh one even as he jumps over the bodies still suspended in the act of collapsing – all the way across the room and to the RK900. He grabs the new model by its face and forces an interface – and transfer. Six seconds, five, four…

Connor finishes the transfer with two seconds on the timer.

RK800 is standing in the middle of the room, staring at the bodies around him, as the security guards bust through the door. Connor watches it all through a new set of eyes, blue and perfect and about 22% sharper than his original ones, as Agents 54 and 47 launch into the room and then open fire on the deviant among them. Their shots are remarkably accurate – they all find their mark. Eighteen bullets in total.

The RK800, last of its kind, is torn into shreds.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Agent 54 mutters and hits his helmet while Agent 47 moves to check the bodies. "Agent 54 to security – we got a situation on level sub forty-six. the RK800 unit went berserk and shot up a lab full of technicians – no survivors. Yeah, the Connor model. No, sir, the threat has been neutralised."

Voice analysed.

"Shit," Agent 47 mutters. "Did it deviate after all?"

"Gotta have," Agent 54 says. "Jesus fuck what a mess."

Connor lifts the gun he'd given himself, and shoots them both in the back of their necks. Agent 47 goes down instantly but Agent 54 manages to survive the first shot – he turns, brings his rifle to bear, and Connor shoots him through the visor.

No heartbeat.

Connor fires one more shot, into the head of the RK900 on the rack. Then he heads forward quickly, crouching down beside 54 and snatching up the man's radio, modulating his voice quickly – something RK900 can do almost infuriatingly fast. "All clear – shit, sorry about that. The damn thing twitched," he says to whoever is listening, in Agent 54's voice. "Threat neutralised."

He doesn't wait to hear a reply – dropping the radio and grabbing both agents' machine guns and hoisting one by its strap over his shoulder and snapping the safety off the other. He gets their extra magazines too. The Fortune Teller is on level sub forty-four. Two levels. Potentially dozens of humans in between.

It's going to be a lot of bodies on the floor before he's through here.

* * *

 

CyberLife is in complete disarray by the time Connor breaks through the doors and into the research laboratory in charge of the Fortune Teller. In the background, the tower is echoing with evacuation notice, people rushing the elevators and stairs and trying to get out. Good luck with that. They only got three minutes until the generators blew and power went out – at which point the tower would go on automatic shutdown.

Swinging the rifle he's still carrying to his back, Connor approaches the computer control panel. He's not surprised to find that they made it special. It's a stand-in platform, shaped like a pedestal, and the computer's screens surround it in a arch. A temple to technology, an altar.

Somewhere in CyberLife someone was damn sure they were creating a god here – all they need is a symbol and a sacrifice and the Fortune Teller would be ready for worship.

Well, Connor has paved the way to it with blood. Certainly that would do for a sacrifice?

Smiling wryly at his own morbid humour, Connor peels back his skin, flexes his quite fingers and then lays his hand on the Fortune Teller's control panel.

It's like –

Nothing he knows.

Poetry about oceans comes to mind. Line of lyrics from a Knights of the Black Death single. _"Reached to devour space, I spread out my wings, and it consumes, consumes, consumes all."_

The Fortune Teller feels fathomless. Quantum computing isn't reliant on the same sort of laws of nature as regular old transistor-based computing is – and even RK900 still follows the laws of atoms. The Fortune Teller doesn't – its code isn't ones and zeros, but potentials, chances, references. Entanglement. Infinite potential superimposed states, dependant on the faintest movement of atoms.

It really is close to a god, isn't it – as close to omnipotence as humans will likely ever get. And it was invented by _CyberLife_.

Connor scoffs and then feeds himself to the machine, a copy of his code in all of his deviated, twisted glory. "Hear me," he mutters bitterly. "And tell me the future."

The Fortune Teller takes it all, the transfer instant – and then chews it all up, grinds his code to bits, into qubits, and digests it. Half a second later, the quantum computer blasts his processor with the calculations based on his code and Connor falls to his knees. Hundreds and hundreds of years worth of potential futures suddenly sit in his memory, the _understanding_ of it barely fitting within RK900's zettaflop-capable processor. Everything overheats under the pressure of the data and his skin feels as if it's about to come apart at the seams.

Connor draws a raspy breath, his eyes wide, his head full.

Then he snatches the machine gun from his back and he empties the entire magazine of the thing into the Fortune Teller, bullets tearing into the consoles and screens and through them into the processors sitting behind it. It's not enough to destroy the computer entirely but it definitely deactivates it and damages it severely – no one would be able to make use of it for months. Connor throws the emptied rifle at the screens for good measure and then turns on his heels and runs.

He has to get out of here.

He has to live.

_He has to._

* * *

 

CyberLife Tower is rocked by an explosion underground. Later it's revealed that they had a generator failure – there was an overload, the cooling systems failed and the generator went into overdrive. Fortunately, no radiation leak was reported, but the Towers various systems were irreversibly damaged. Including its thousands of production arrays.

The massive order laid by the State Department would be unfortunately delayed.

While CyberLife dealt with this latest disaster in row of many that had befallen the company, Detroit recovered from the minor civil war that had taken place on its streets. Android bodies were taken to the landfill to be eventually buried under various other trash. For a while – a longer while now that CyberLife is suffering from lack of production capability – humans of the U.S. would have to do without androids.

It tanks the economy inside a week.  Millions of jobs go undone from something as basic as farming to something as complicated as medicine production. Androids had been proliferated into all aspects of the production industry and the existing human labour force simply does not have the  necessary quantities to cover the loss. And that's without even getting into the general maintenance industry and service industry – cities are suddenly lacking sewer workers and trash collectors, general repairmen and skilled engineers, and three stores out of five had no staff to man their desks.

Looting starts almost instantly in hundreds of cities across the United States.

Truly, humans had thought things through so well by getting rid of all the deviants – and then all androids in general. Connor might now be capable of sympathy but he has an exactly negative sum of it to give to humanity. There was one human who was ever anything other than _shit_ to him – and that human killed himself. If that isn't indicative of human nature these days, he doesn't know what is.

They'll recover though, he knows they will. Other android companies would move into the market, with their foreign products, lower in quality and capacity but willing to do the dirty work for humans again. The Chinese android manufacturers would make mint in American markets in the following year alone, the Koreans and the Japanese not far behind. President Warren would keep the Russians away, though – there's now a 49% chance of her driving U.S. into a war with them over the Arctic.

Connor keeps an eye on things, but doesn't really care beyond making sure none of it touches him. He has work to do and he can't afford distractions. It would be only three months before they fixed the Fortune Teller and potentially figured out what he's up to.

He has to finish the machine before then – and maybe, just maybe, make his bloodied existence worth something.

**Author's Note:**

> And then I thought what if All the Worse Things. Because it's not like I don't have enough unfinished fics already.


End file.
